Every Wednesday I’d see this wee, old Salvation Army lady in the doorway of Jenner’s department store on Princes Street, right across from the Scott Monument. She was there every week, winter or summer, hail, rain or shine. Back when Jenner’s still had a doorman (complete with livery and top hat) I’d often see him chatting to her. I don’t know why, but it always made me happy to see her there every week as I passed by on the bus to work. A couple of years ago I got a quick photo shooting from the top deck of the bus as it was waiting to move off. Just as I clicked the shutter a young woman walked into the frame and I actually liked the result: the old lady and the young, the old lady in her uniform doing her bit of duty, the hip young thing in shades, trendy clothes, ciggy dangling from her hands headphones on, away in her own world, the contrast between them appealed to me, even though it was the simple result of her walking by just as I took the shot, so I can’t claim I was trying to do anything clever here with my pic:

Sadly I haven’t seen the Sally Army lady for a couple of months now. I keep looking every Wednesday when I pass on the way to work but she hasn’t been there, so it looks like she has had to stop doing it now – I don’t know if her age or health has meant she had to stop after all these years, but I do hope she is alright. I was used to seeing here there every week and I have to confess I found it almost comforting that this old lady would be there each week with the War Cry, there was something touching about it and it always made me smile to see her at her post. She was one of the little fixtures in my map of the city.

A form of tryptich on the art board from the always interesting lot at the Saint John’s church on Princes Street, with three things the Roman Catholic Church has had problems with over its history (if they had picked everything the church has been prejudiced against, let alone violently opposed to they’d have needed a canvas longer than all of Princes Street), placed right in full view of where the Pope would go past in his recent and most unwelcome visit (why is the taxpayer funding a trip from a religious figure? It’s not a ‘state’ visit since the Vatican isn’t a real state but a religious theocracy holdover from medieval times. Why are we paying for a homophobic, bigoted, mysoginistic, anti-science, intolerant former Nazi to come to our country and then to insult us?).

I’m usually more inclined to motorbikes than horses as a mode of transport (I think horses are beautiful creatures, but I prefer a mode of transport without a mind of its own), but riding along on the surfline on a sunny beach does look wonderful.